Media Damnation (Updated)
The Philippine news media have a problem: how to make what’s turning into one of the most boring elections in Philippine history interesting as well as meaningful to a weary electorate that this early is already demonstrating that it will elect senators this May on the sole basis of name recall.
The Pulse Asia list of the leading candidates for the Senate as of the last quarter of 2012 contained no surprises:
Rank Candidate
1 LEGARDA, Loren
2 ESCUDERO, Francis “Chiz”
3-5 CAYETANO, Alan Peter
3-5 ESTRADA, JV Ejercito
3-5 ENRILE, Juan Ponce Jr.
6-10 TRILLANES, Antonio “Sonny” IV
6-10 HONASAN, Gregorio “Gringo”
6-10 PIMENTEL, Aquilino Martin “Koko” III
6-11 ZUBIRI, Juan Miguel “Migz”
6-11 ANGARA, Edgardo “Sonny”
9-11 VILLAR, Cynthia
12-15 BINAY, Ma. Lourdes Nancy
12-16 GORDON, Richard “Dick”
12-16 MAGSAYSAY, Ramon “Jun” Jr.
12-17 MADRIGAL, Ana “Jamby”
Not only is the list of leading candidates for senator predictably shot through with the same names the electorate has been voting into power every election; it’s also unlikely that these sons, daughters, brothers and sisters of politicos who have been in government for decades, as well as the reelectionists among them, will, on their own volition, have anything new or perceptive to say.
The electorate has often been blamed for electing the same people, or at least those with the same surnames. While indicating a level of political education unworthy of citizenship in a country where leadership is the one factor that for decades has kept its people poor, corruption rampant, and violence a daily fact of life, the electorate hardly has any choice in the matter primarily because they don’t have the information that can help them make better choices.
The absence of information on, for example, what the candidates intend to do once in the House of Representatives, the Senate, or even the Presidency inevitably leads to decisions based primarily, if not solely, on name recall. But instructive is the fact that the electorate responds favorably to those rare candidates who go beyond making motherhood statements, and who actually say something remotely suggesting recognition of what the country’s problems are and how to address them. The electorate’s positive response to Benigno Aquino III, for example, was not solely based on his being the son of his parents. His “walang mahirap kung walang corrupt (no poor people if there’s no corruption)” mantra also resonated favorably on the electorate, among whom corruption in government is widely known and commonly experienced.
Philippine elections should be opportunities not only to identify the problems and issues the country needs to resolve, but also for the candidates for office to develop and present what they intend to do about them, whether in terms of policy or legislation.
That elections are almost never such occasions can be justifiably blamed on the failure of the candidates to go beyond the mere quest for power and to actually propose how the power they seek may be used for the country’s benefit.
But it can also be blamed on the tendency of the news media to cover elections on the basis of which candidates’ names are most familiar, which events or statements are susceptible to high-rating, sensational reporting and/or comment, and/ or relying solely on the candidates’ press agents to provide reports that are inevitably self-serving.
While the major news media players have understood the need to be pro-active and to report elections as events of significance, the 2013 senatorial elections are particularly problematic for the news media because of the emerging indifference of the electorate, which in turn is due to the sense that, as in past elections, whatever the outcome of the elections this year, the country will still end up with people who’re either clueless about what the country needs, or who’re armed with the same clichés about legislation their predecessors mouthed in the past. Unless they do something about it, this is the chilling context that can damn the news media as similarly boring, and ultimately as irrelevant, as the elections they cover.
Can the news media still do something to prevent Philippine elections’ –and, as a consequence, the news media’s—slide into irrelevance?
The news media can start by identifying the issues and problems that intelligent legislation can meaningfully address, after which they can demand from the candidates what they intend to do about them.
Of particular interest and relevance, for example, is an issue that involves the candidates themselves: the dominance of political dynasties over the political system, which results in the monopoly by a handful of families over political power. Granting that there’s little chance that the dynasts themselves will even consider legislation to curb that monopoly, the news media can nevertheless draw from them what the difference is in their perspectives and approaches, if any, with those of their fathers, mothers, sisters, wives, husbands, sons or daughters.
Other than declaring that “gusto ko may pagkain ka (what I want is for you to have food),” how, in concrete legislative terms, does someone like Juan Ponce (“Jackie”) Enrile intend to address the problem of hunger, the rate of which has surged among the population despite the supposed growth of the economy—or, for that matter, the increase in the unemployment rate? What measures could someone like Ma. Lourdes (“Nancy”) Binay, whose father Vice President Jejomar Binay claims a large OFW constituency, introduce to better protect OFWs caught in the conflict areas of the world?
At a more fundamental level, the news media can draw from the candidates their views on the fundamentals of the approach to development that every government since 1946 has followed—which can be summed up in the strategy to attract foreign investments through such enticements as tax breaks, keeping labor wages down, and generous profit remittance rules in the context of the country’s failure to industrialize. Does any of the candidates for the Senate have an alternative to this approach, or are they uniformly committed to it?
The kind of pro-active coverage that can result will be way beyond merely asking the candidates what they can say about this or that event. Not only can it help make Philippine elections more meaningful. It can also enable the news media to make themselves relevant to this country’s present concerns, and, perhaps even more critically, the country’s as well as its own future.
As a rule of thumb, most of the time we deserve all the elected and appointed government officials that lead/take advantage of us. It’s a reflection of who we are, well most of us. Beating a dead horse is a national past time.
Sometimes we have to take a step back and look at ourselves from a different point of view. httpss://thesocietyofhonor.blogspot.com/